“You, Mr. Harriot, you ask him how far it is to the place where the river begins,” the captain bellowed. He was clasping and unclasping his hands. His face was bright with sweat.
Mr. Harriot whispered to the chief.
There was a long pause. Again the captain stomped. The chief’s eyes were closed. The captain fumbled with his pistol.
“Fifteen days, twenty,” the chief replied at last.
“And how many days beyond the mountains to the sea?”
Andrew watched as the chief seemed to doze off. He wasn’t faking; he was fainting.
“The same,” Menatonon said finally.
“Ask him if he’s been there, Mr. Harriot.”
Andrew studied the chief’s face and chest as Mr. Harriot questioned him. Everything about the Indian slowed as if he was dying. Then, with a huge effort, he roused himself.
“No.”
“Then how does he get metal to trade with Chief Pemisapan? Do you understand, Wanchese? I want to know how he gets metal to trade for skins.”
“We trade for it with the mountain people” was the reply.
Captain Lane was desperate to get to where the grains of soft metal were found, then on to the Pacific Ocean, but first he had to return to base and make preparations.
“We’ll take Menatonon with us as hostage so his people don’t attack us as we go,” he announced.
“That may prove too much for him,” Mr. Harriot warned. “If he dies on the way, we’re dead men too.”
Manteo suggested they exchange the chief for Skiko, the chief’s favorite son.
“Make the exchange,” the captain muttered.
Skiko went with them back to Fort Roanoke, manacled to one of the company day and night. He was Tremayne’s age. He made no complaint as the irons chafed at his wrists and ankles. While he was chained to Tremayne, Andrew cut strips of hide and cloth to cushion Skiko’s hurts, but they didn’t help. The wounds became infected. By the time they arrived at the fort, his wrists and ankles were red and swollen, oozing pus. Andrew treated them with salt water.
The captain called a meeting of his council. Mr. Harriot ordered Andrew to take notes. “Write down as much of it as you can get,” he said.
“We have three choices,” the captain announced. “We may stay here and starve, racking our guts on their moldy corn. Or we can attempt to move our fort to a better harbor on the Chesapeake. Or we can try for gold and the Pacific Sea.
“If we set out now, we could be back by Easter—in time to meet the supply Sir Walter promised.
“What do you say?”
To a man, they shouted, “For gold and the Pacific Sea!”
The captain’s face was red as a drunk’s.
“Excellent! Excellent! We’ll divide…divide the company,” he stammered in his excitement. “Forty of the strongest to go, sixty to stay.”
At that there were loud grumbles.
“No fear!” he yelled. “Spoils and treasure will be shared equal among all.”
Late into the night, he worked out details of the expedition with his lieutenants. Mr. Harriot, Tremayne, and Andrew observed but said nothing.
“We will go with what we need for a week,” he told them. “Thereafter we’ll supply ourselves, trading or raiding as we travel—copper pots or lead shot, their choice,” he said with a harsh laugh.
“Pemisapan must not know,” the captain added in a hushed voice. “He must believe the whole company is here, sending for food as usual.”
After writing in the log for Mr. Harriot, Andrew told Sky what had happened.
“Captain Lane broke his honor,” Sky said. “He traded his spirit for the bright metal.”
Before dawn on Ash Wednesday, the captain slipped out of the fort with a small company plus two mastiffs as guard dogs. He left Skiko behind in chains as hostage. It was cold and drizzling. Andrew pulled on his cap for America.
“You look like a suffering monk in that,” the captain teased.
Andrew looked at the captain’s hat, already sopping. “Perhaps, sir, but mine sheds wet.”
There were snickers. Captain Lane shot Andrew an ugly look that made the boy afraid.
36
STEW OF DOG
It was slow, cold going as they poled the heavy boats upriver. Andrew went ahead with the scouts, looking for signs of life. “A village!” he reported to Mr. Harriot. “But no smoke, no people.”
They stopped and searched. The fires had been cold for days. “There’s not a grain of corn to be found,” Tremayne announced. Andrew shivered. The place smelled dead.
The second village they came to was the same. Every village they came to was dead to them.
“This must be by plan,” Mr. Harriot said. “The people have been sent off. Not even the old and sick remain.”
Their meals now amounted to a half-pint measure of corn each day. They grubbed for roots, made stew of sassafras, and chewed buds like the deer. Salt ate where he killed. He knew if he came near the men, he’d be robbed.
After a week without meat, the two mastiffs they’d brought as guards were starving. Their once-fine brindle coats hung slack on their great bodies. Their eyes were dull. They smelled ill. They no longer had strength to clean themselves.
One afternoon Manteo motioned to Andrew. “I feel eyes,” he whispered. “We’re being watched.” Andrew’s hair went up. He felt eyes too.
Early the next morning, Manteo surprised a young warrior. As the boy sprinted away, he tripped on a root and twisted his ankle. Manteo caught him.
“He does not talk,” he said when he reported to the captain.
The prisoner was a little older than Andrew, perhaps fourteen. There was no fear in his eyes. They were bright and hard.
Captain Lane called Wanchese to interrogate. He didn’t come. The men looked around. Wanchese was gone!
Andrew had never seen the captain surprised.
“Then you!” he ordered Manteo. “Ask him why the people have fled. Find out where they have gone.”
“He does not talk,” Manteo said again.
The captain ordered torture. He had a man shave slivers of pine in front of the Indian and gesture how they would be driven deep under his fingernails and set afire.
Watching that show made Andrew angry. “Would Sir Walter do this?” he asked Mr. Harriot.
The tall man looked hard at him and nodded. “To keep us safe he would. He’s a soldier first, above all.”
As the Indian boy watched the preparations for his torture, his eyes glazed over as if his mind were leaving his body.
“It’s no good,” said Manteo. “Torture will not make him talk. But the mastiffs might. Bring up the dogs.”
The warrior had never seen such dogs. The handlers brought them close, growling and foaming. In his terror they got from him that Pemisapan had sent messengers to the river villages: “The white ones come to destroy you,” they warned. “Take your food and leave! Starve them.”
“How did Pemisapan learn our plan?” Captain Lane asked.
“From the one who fled,” Mr. Harriot said quietly. “Wanchese betrayed us.”
Or we betrayed him, Andrew thought.
Captain Lane’s face worked for a moment, his mouth pulled tight.
He called the company together. “We have two pints of corn per man,” he said in an even voice. “I figure we are one hundred sixty miles from Fort Roanoke, four or five days’ travel downriver. We can turn back now,” he said slowly, “or”—his voice deepening—“we can go on to the place where the grains of metal are found.”
Although many were sick from hunger, all but two voted to go on.
“Good!” exclaimed the captain. “You are good men!”
He ordered the captive bound to a tree by the river. The boy’s foot was swollen, bluish gray. Andrew caught his eyes as they left. The Indian’s sought nothing.
“Tremayne,” Andrew whispered, “we can’t leave him.”
“He would leave you.”
; “He’ll die there,” Andrew said, his face tightening as he imagined the boy’s pain and terror.
“Probably,” the man said quietly. He studied Andrew, then put an arm around him. “There’s nothing we can do. We have to make sure we don’t die here! Come on!”
Two days later, the handlers strung the mastiffs up like hogs and cut their throats. They saved the blood. They boiled the butchered dogs in blood and sassafras.
That day, the company ate pottage of dog spiced with sassafras. At first Andrew gagged; then he ate and felt better for it. His mind was numb.
37
PEMISAPAN’S LAST PLOT
Andrew lay half awake in the first light. Hunger prodded him. His mind raced in the way hunger inspires.
Wanchese and Pemisapan scheme to starve us on the river. Once they know we’re dead, they’re going to kill those left at the fort. Wanchese has gone to Pemisapan to do that work!
He poked Tremayne awake and told him what he’d figured out. “Wanchese is an allegiance man,” Andrew explained. “Pemisapan wants us gone. Wanchese follows his plan.”
“Yes, it’s possible, Wanchese going off like that…,” Tremayne said slowly. “What do we do? How do we get word to the fort?”
Just then Salt made a row after a squirrel that had slipped under a log. Thinking to eat that breakfast for him, Andrew heaved at the log and went sprawling.
It was a small hollowed-log boat with two rough paddles.
Tremayne looked at Andrew and nodded. “That’s how we’ll beat Wanchese!” he said with a tight smile.
They went and told Mr. Harriot. Together they examined the boat. “It might work,” Mr. Harriot muttered. “It’s worth anything to try and beat Pemisapan. Let’s see what the captain says.”
“I wouldn’t have Andrew tell it the way he told it to me,” Tremayne said. “It sounds too much like a dream.”
“You two tell him, then,” Andrew replied.
Mr. Harriot went to Captain Lane. Without mentioning Andrew, he reported what Andrew had figured Wanchese was up to and their plan to beat him to the fort.
The captain’s jaw worked when he heard the Indian’s name. Slowly, he nodded. “Show me the boat,” he said after a pause.
“It will carry you three,” he muttered when he saw it. “Go, and good luck!” He turned quickly and walked away.
As they dropped down the river, Andrew watched for the place where they’d left the young captive.
He wasn’t there. Nobody said anything. A weight lifted from Andrew’s heart.
They paddled without stop, switching places as they went, two paddling as the one resting ate cold stew of dog, cooled his blistered hands, and scooped water from the river. The ache in their shoulders became a steady searing flame of pain.
It was almost dark when Salt stiffened. They smelled smoke. They hardly breathed as they drifted past.
In the fire’s glow they saw Wanchese, his back to them.
They paddled all that night and through the next day. It was dark when they beached the boat on the shore below the fort and stumbled up to the gate. It was barred.
As Salt barked their greeting, Mr. Harriot yelled, “What cheer, Englishmen! Admit us!”
They could hear calling inside. Suddenly a clutch of flaming reeds came flying over the rampart. The three moved close to the burning reeds so the guards could see their faces.
“It’s Mr. Harriot!” someone shouted. “Open the gate! It’s Mr. Harriot with Tremayne and Andrew!”
As they entered the fort, folks rushed up, pulling on clothes and yelling, “Where are the others?” “Did you find gold?”
“Wanchese betrayed us,” Mr. Harriot said, and downed a dram of spirits to ease the pain in his shoulders. “He plotted with Pemisapan to starve us,” he went on as he filled the glass for Tremayne. “All the river villages were deserted. Once Wanchese figured we were sure to die of hunger in the cold, he hurried back to help attack the weakened fort. We passed him last night. He’ll make Pemisapan’s village tomorrow.”
Tremayne left something in the glass for Andrew. It burned going down, but soon it soothed.
“The others were alive when we left them,” Mr. Harriot continued. “They’re a day or two behind us. We never got to where the wassador is found.
“And you people? Your news?”
“We are as you left us, sir, only starker,” replied the lieutenant. “The last time we sent to Pemisapan for food, he turned us away with nothing. He lets time do his work.”
“The hostage, Skiko, how is he?” Mr. Harriot asked.
“He’s well.”
The people at Fort Roanoke had kept Skiko fed and comfortable, despite their own wants.
Mr. Harriot went to him. “I’m sorry,” he said as he unlocked Skiko’s chains.
The Indian said nothing. He left the next morning with a large tin platter, a peace offering for his father.
The following afternoon Captain Lane and the haggard expedition men straggled in. Right away, the captain set off with Mr. Harriot, Tremayne, and Andrew and an armed guard to parley with Pemisapan for food and show the chief his plan was spoiled.
Andrew watched Pemisapan’s face as they filed into his lodge. If the chief was startled to see them alive, he gave no sign. Andrew noticed that the allegiance men, though, studied them as rare creatures.
Their surviving seemed to convince Pemisapan they really were possessed of a kind of magic. That, plus the power of their guns, persuaded him to allow the English a measure of his seed corn and the promise his people would plant two fields for them.
It was dark when they got back to the fort. Captain Lane addressed the company: “Pemisapan has sold us food for three days. He will continue to buy our pots, cloth, and other goods. For pleasure in those things and fear of our guns, he promises to have his people plant for us.”
“If that’s all there is, we can’t last,” Tremayne murmured to Andrew. “The new corn won’t be ripe until July.” Andrew belched a dry heave and wondered if the taste in his mouth was fear. His stomach rumbled.
Tremayne heard and nodded. “Mine too,” he said gently. “Never mind. We’ll make it. Sir Walter knows we’re hungry. The resupply he promised for Easter is out there somewhere.” Besides cheering Andrew, Tremayne cheered himself.
The next evening Andrew wrote in the journal, “We eat so little now we enjoy great cleanness of teeth.”
As he was writing, Skiko returned with a warning. Andrew translated for the company: “I have been to see Pemisapan. He treats me as an ally because I was your prisoner. A great priest has died. Pemisapan has summoned a large gathering of mourners, mostly warriors. They will assemble at his village. He has been buying alliances with them with your copper pots.
“When the moon is down, he’ll bring those warriors here in boats. On a signal, his allegiance men will shoot fire arrows into the captain’s house and Mr. Harriot’s. When you come rushing out in your nightshirts, they will slaughter you and then take on the whole, which he says will be no more dangerous than a headless snake.”
As Andrew reported Skiko’s message, Captain Lane began to pace. He narrowed his eyes and glared at Skiko. “Ask him why he warns us. It may be a trick.”
Andrew repeated exactly what the captain had said.
Skiko gave the captain a long look. “For the care your men and those two took of me,” he said finally, pointing to Andrew and Tremayne. “The mourners come soon,” he warned as he left.
The captain called the company together. “We are doomed if we wait. The only thing for it is to strike first.
“Now!
“We’ll need to be few and quick: me, my ten best soldiers, and you, Mr. Harriot, to lead us through Pemisapan’s village—you know it best and can do our interrogating.
“Who else?” he said, half to himself. Andrew held his breath; he didn’t want to be left out.
“Andrew,” said Mr. Harriot. “He has the naphtha and knows how to manage it. Better than fire arrows—h
e can set the main lodges afire all at once. Tremayne will lay the fuse.”
“Yes!” said the captain. “Fourteen people; three boats.”
The attackers blackened their faces. Andrew half-smiled to himself at how cold his hands were as he smeared on the wood ash. His face was hot.
They canoed to the mainland. The sky was dark; there was a noisy wind. Andrew carried a large piece of flint, the piece of roughened steel to strike against, and the bottle of naphtha. Tremayne carried the fuse—a long rope of cotton cloth laced with gunpowder. The boy’s only thought was how the village was laid out, where the lodges he had to spread the naphtha around were. He checked the bottle. Tight. He patted his pocket to make sure the flint and steel were there. Yes.
The raiders slipped into the village, tossing bones to the dogs. The captain’s scouts crept up behind the Indian guards, flung silk cords around their necks and pulled tight, then bagged the heads in canvas sacks.
Andrew rubbed his hands together to warm them so his grip would be good on the naphtha bottle. As Tremayne set out to lay the fuse, Andrew crept around the lodges where Pemisapan and his allegiance men slept. He tried to pour an even band. The smell was strong. He held his breath when he heard people stirring inside. Now he was panting, but his hands were steady. His only thought was to spread the naphtha right, no breaks, around here, there, and then a trail to where the fuse would be.
With the last of it, he made a pool, where Tremayne set the fuse end.
Calm now, staring, listening hard, Andrew slipped to his place of safety.
At the captain’s yell, he struck a spark. It didn’t take. His hands were shaking. He struck again. Too feeble. “Steady!” he said to himself. “Steady.” It was Sir Walter’s voice. “One, two, three—strike!”
The fuse caught. It burned toward the lodges faster than a man could run.
Andrew hadn’t realized it, but in his nervousness he’d spilled some of the naphtha on his boot. As the fuse caught, the spark had set him on fire too!
Struggling to stifle his own flames, he watched the fuse fire flashing and sparking to where the naphtha started.
“Yes!” he shouted when the naphtha caught. It went around the lodges exactly right, fiercer and higher than he’d expected, first firing the lodge coverings, then the whole in a crackling roar as black smoke billowed up out of the orange.
Raleigh's Page Page 16
